GIRL IN AN ODD CITY

In 1995 Taiwan, President Lee Teng-hui accepts an invitation to visit his alma mater, Cornell University—a move that heightens tensions across the Taiwan Strait. Sensing opportunity amid uncertainty, immigration agencies flood Taiwanese newspapers with ads promoting overseas residency programs. Among them is Belize—one of Taiwan’s few diplomatic allies, marketed as the “Hawaii of Central America.”

Just before starting sixth grade, Koko travels withs her parents to Belize on an “immigration experience trip.” In a cave on the town’s outskirts, she discovers a mysterious pottery shard that connects her to the spirit of the Crystal Maiden, a young Mayan woman trapped there for over a thousand years. Lonely after falling out with her friends for telling too many lies, Koko finally finds someone who
listens.

Back home in 1990s Taipei, the city is transforming at breakneck speed. Shiny high-rises replace aging buildings, and old neighborhoods quietly vanish. Koko’s grandparents live in Pi-tzai-chiao, a working-class corner where her grandfather’s patchwork tin shack stands awkwardly among luxury villas and marble-walled mansions like an ugly tumor on a body—unwanted and unsightly, yet once home to eight family members under one roof.

Each autumn, the community gathers for a ritual honoring the local Guanyin Temple, held in front of her grandfather’s house. While adults bustle with preparations, Koko and her cousins sneak off to explore eerie, abandoned homes nearby. With guidance from the Crystal Maiden, Koko launches s a storytelling business in the neighborhood, captivating crowds with ghost tales that soon outshine the temple’s traditional opera performances. When a real estate development company takes notice, however, things grow murky. Could her stories be used for profit? What secrets lie behind this peculiar partnership—and what are they really after?

As long-time residents quietly disappear, an unsettling question emerges: how can a child’s imagination shape the future of a city? Koko’s tale becomes a haunting reflection on memory, imagination, and the price of growing up in a city racing toward change.